@Teclo:
Actually that's the situation Luffy was in at Loguetown as he was about to be killed - and he was still smiling.
I can't believe you're comparing Buggy's bunch of goons who Luffy knew Zoro and Sanji could handle no problem to the freakin' Marine organization where thousands of his comrades might die just for him.
@Teclo:
Anyway, you should look at this another way - are you saying that if Ace's friends weren't battling in front of him, he would be smiling right now?
You don't know how he would have acted. Especially considering the circumstances between his capture and execution and Luffy and Roger's are completely different. All you know is Ace generally had a smile on his face and acted goofy just like Luffy in the little we saw of him before his fight with Blackbeard in the chapters including the cover stories (filler too if you count it).
@Teclo:
Even before this war broke out, Ace looked incredibly depressed. His current mood began before the war broke out.
No shit, he failed his mission in avenging his comrade and he knows he just dragged his father into saving him because he knew that's the type of man he was. He still had a smile on his face when Garp visited him though so that's more holes in your comparison.
@Teclo:
He's repeatedly shown to be different from many of the other characters;
And? How does that make him any less a D?
@Teclo:
Ace is one of the only people to talk badly of Roger,
And? Why does that matter? You're acting like Roger is the pinnacle D that every other D has to adore or they'd be kicked out of the D family.
@Teclo:
he doesn't want to be the Pirate King and has no personal ambition other than helping Whitebeard be the Pirate King.
And his lack of ambition makes him less of a D is what you're getting at, right? Saul just wanted to spend the rest of his days being a bumpkin. And even Roger didn't have much of an ambition in terms of achieving grand goals in life. He just wanted to be free otherwise he'd have joined Shiki in taking over the world.
@Teclo:
Saul died with a smile on his face even though he'd just witnessed attempted genocide and was watching a little girl flee the inferno that was once her homeland, with a future inevitably filled with fear as the Marines hunt her down.
He wanted to make her feel better, dumbass. That was the whole point of that scene.
@Teclo:
If Luffy had died at Loguetown, his crew would probably have been killed by Smoker.
Luffy didn't know how strong Smoker was at that point. So whether your statement is true or not is irrelevant.
@Teclo:
It wasn't like it was a totally worry-free situation for him; there were obvious consequences to his death.
All of the consequences he knew about were minuscule compared to Ace's troubles that Ace knew about.
@Teclo:
Ace rejected his father - his ambition to get Whitebeard to be Pirate King seems to be an attempt to essentially "overwrite" his true father's existence, or at least to defeat him in the only way he can. If he can make a new Pirate King, Roger will be overshadowed by the new one - overwritten, as I said - but if Ace is the one to become it, he'll be following in his father's footsteps. Thus he needs to make someone else Pirate King. Showing Ace not smiling as his death draws near is a potent way of showing that he's nothing like his father (and therefore the other Ds) just like Luffy smiling at Loguetown showed how similar to Roger he is.
What fucking bull-shit logic. Ace wanted to make Whitebeard pirate king because he admired him so much. It had nothing to do with his father. Ace tried time and time again to kill him and only stopped because he grew to like him not because he decided to use him to get one up over his old man. Ace wouldn't have forsaken his dreams just to spite his dad in a half-assed, convoluted way. And even if he wanted to, he'd have never tried to be Pirate King in the first place. Also how is Ace not being like his father in any way mean he's not a true D? Does Luffy being nothing like Saul make him any less of a D?